Joyful Jubilant Learning

Rapid Fire Learning - an August challenge!

I was honored to be asked by Rosa to host the Rapid Fire Learning segment for August. It truly is amazing what we have learned as I look back on our posts! I also loved Rosa's challenge to dream bigger dreams, to learn new things simply for joy and pleasure.

So, to prepare you for August, I have a challenge to present. Let's not only share what we have learned but also anything we have unlearned! We all have a tendency to complicate our lives through our learning; perhaps August will be a month where we start to simplify our lives by unlearning things. As living and learning go together (Adrian Savage), unlearning and freeing go together, in my opinion. The most accomplished piano student must not only learn properly, but unlearn any limiting habit (posture, hand positioning, etc.) to fully develop into an accomplished musician.

Personally, while on a short vacation this week, I am going to take a step toward simplifying and enriching exercise by taking a walk with my wife - without thinking of time, heart rate and burning calories. I am going to stop to look at nature, talk to neighbors and simply stroll, if I desire. I need to unlearn that all exercise is to be strenuous. I love the picture of the Reagans walking together because it pictures what I am seeking for my wife and me.

Hopefully you get the idea; throughout the month, I plan to focus some thoughts toward teachers who are preparing for a new school year. If you an educator, I hope you will interact with the JJL community.

I trust you will enjoy your August in every way!

~ Dean Boyer

Learn from the Master: Blog for 1 Person

The "Master" you learn from is you.
The "1 Person" you blog for is you.

If you are a blogger, a writer, (or want to be) or keep a journal (or have been wanting to), this post is for you.

The Blog as Journal

I've been keeping a personal journal using TypePad, and it's become a terrific multi-purpose tool for me. It's been working out so well, I felt I had to share it with you as a suggestion to try. In fact, I have had this draft sitting here since this past May because my results were almost immediate, but then I kept doing it instead of blogging about it, and the draft scrolled down my posting page until it totally disappeared from view --- I had forgotten it was here until I told Joanna Young about it today within a comment at Confident Writing.

Joanna had started the conversation while reflecting on her recent "blogging holiday;"

"One of the things that you can do while taking a blogging holiday is take stock of the way that you read, and write, and comment and engage in this activity we call 'blogging.'"

She talks about routine, addiction, time, writing, focus, and purpose; great thoughts you can reflect on with her too. To save you from re-reading my comment there...

Back in mid-May, I created a brand new blog and simply called it "bJournal." It is password protected and not public, and I initially started it because after a lifetime of paper and then Word doc journals, I wanted to tag my morning pages and other private journaling with categories and keywords so I could better find those flashes of inspiration that can come from stream of consciousness writing.

Well it has turned out to be one of the best writing ideas I have ever had. I now use it for all my blog writing: The "noise" and private stuff stays there, and what is worth sharing and I think worth the value of my readers' attention moves to one of my "real" blog draft fields to be slept on and then edited in a more online-worthy voice of the Mea Ho'okipa. Blogging is very addictive, and what bJournal has done is satisfy the fix, while serving its digital archiving purposes for me, with the cleaning up of my act a true bonus.

I have had a goal to be a better commenter within the blog community and not an "airy fairy" one, and I now find I am putting comment drafts in bJournal too if I want to curb my first impulse in its writing and return to the blog later.

Now I will be the first to admit that there are times I cannot resist sharing the noise. This is a work in progress!

There is another thought that comes to mind with this.

Who is the "Master" and just how many blogging tools do you need?

Web-based Writing as Top-Shelf Toolbox

My dad used to say that the best tool in his beloved Craftsman toolbox was the box itself. (He meant the portable one you carry around with you - not the mega he-man garage models.)

He felt that there must have been some divine intervention in the mind of the guy who took it from prototype to its red stainless steel goodness, for the space between the top shelf and the cover when it latched shut most effortlessly, perfectly defined which tools any respectable common sense handyman would use most often, readily accessible to him. Far as Dad could see,

To use more than that; irrelevant and uncertain tinkering.

To skip using what was there in nearly every job; you're rushing and may have missed something.

When it came time to allow my brothers the learning privilege of using his precious tools, he'd simply open the cover, wait for them to make their choice for the job at hand, and then teach them based on the tool they chose, grilling them on why they did so.

I have now been blogging for three years, and TypePad is my Craftsman. There are twelve blogs on my TypePad dashboard, some public, some private, some mine, some hosted for clients, some at the invitation of others to guest author. I don't really think of them as for blogging; they are for writing as my craft.

The lesson I've been thinking most about these days, is another one from my Dad, about how there were times he just knew that an older once-cherished tool had to slip a drawer down to make room for a newer one, or just maybe, it had to be left in the garage.

Related posts: From the JJL Archives

• We all have magical powers. We call those magical powers ‘writing.’ The magic is within the written word.
• A Guide to Writing Well; this is a must for your del.icio.us tagging with writing how-to.
• Write to Learn; Slow, Steady, Sure. We need to keep learning connections intact, no matter what wizardry technology cooks up next, if we are to continually mentor new generations of lifelong learners. 9 very thoughtful comments in this conversation.

Advice from Starbucker: I offer this advice to someone reading this who's thinking about blogging - go to one of those services like Blogger, register, sit in front of your computer, and start pouring some of your life experiences onto the screen.  At worst, it's therapy. At best, it's a whole new wonderful world.
Read the rest here: How Do I Blog Thee? Let Me Start at the Beginning

Click Comments - yay or nay?

What do you think of this?

Hat tip: saw it at Scott Williams place, Big Is The New Small. You can click in there to see how the clicks tally up, or to PostReach, the widget creator.

Discover your students' dreams!

During the month of August, I would like to encourage the educators in our JJL family. As an educator myself, though I have enjoyed my short summer break, I am rejuvenated for the new year ahead. If you are a teacher or administrator, you might know what I mean.

It’s a new year packaged with new students, new challenges and new unknowns. I love fresh starts! There is nothing I can do to change the past but I can certainly use it to impact the future! One of the challenges I give myself when starting a new year is to love my students, their parents and my colleagues better than last year. No conditions…no exceptions.

With about thirty years of starts behind me I realize that this is no easy challenge. How will I include each child into my heart? How will I unconditionally love each parent? How will I lead a colleague who has been inflexible and resistant to new ideas?

For the teacher, here are some ideas to consider as you start a new year:

1. Create specific plans to celebrate each and every student around you. Start the day with a 5 minute “connection time”; this technique can make a huge difference. I love Rosa’s 5 minute plan in her book Managing with Aloha. This works for students and colleagues as well! A major benefit to you is the insight and understanding you gain; the benefit to others is the powerful truth that they are valued.
2. Teach your students the value of being themselves and how to appreciate differences. Authenticity can be realized only when we are willing to be who we truly are. Everything around children tells them to be someone else; those who have fragile self esteems are certain prey.
3. Discover your students’ dreams and encourage them to never give up pursuing them. Everyone has dreams; some are wisely fueled and guided. Others are extinguished before they have a chance. As a teacher and a dreamer, I tried to guard myself against saying things that would destroy a dream and tried to focus on how I could guide the student toward it.
4. Tell your students that you admire the strengths you see in them. They all have strengths. Tell them what you see and differentiate lessons so they can work from those strengths.

Discovering your students' dreams and encouraging the pursuit of them is as important as celebrating, accepting and admiring them. What a powerful impact each has on children!

Do you have dreams for this year? I hope you not only have them but share them with others and with the JJL family. May you find yourself looking toward this new year with exciting expectancy!

~ Dean Boyer

Exactly what have we learned in our brave new world?

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2007 when...

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you (or IM your kids because they somehow didn't hear you call out to them from the kitchen).

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses still haven't answered your invite to Twitter or Facebook.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen (and you're thinking, thank goodness!).

8. Leaving the house (or office) without your cell phone (or blackberry), which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go online [to check your stats and comments] before getting your coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message where you can link this.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list [or if you did, you're wondering why the blogger actually typed in the numbers].

15. Now you scrolled back up to check that there really wasn't a #9 on this list, 'cause you'd want to tag it in del.icio.us, digg or stumble it, probably never to look at it again.

AND NOW YOU ARE LAUGHING at yourself, wondering if you can meme your own reaction on You Tube.

And of course... you blogged this instead of forwarding the email you received it in, making sure trackbacks were enabled for it ...

Oh go ahead; you know you want to!

Learning: Flying Five For July

I so much appreciate the time to step back near the end of the month and reflect on our learnings for the month.

I love the quotation the photographer had with this picture:

...He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying... ~ Quote by Friedrich Nietzsche

Here are my 5 learnings for July:

1. I learned/re-learned how precious warm summers are in Canada and that I will not teach a summer course anymore for the University of Manitoba. I have taught a course each summer for 15 years and I will not do it next year so I can fully appreciate July and work on new projects.
2. I am learning to collaborate at a deeper level - working with Steve Roesler on a management project and working with Denise Bissonnette on employee engagement project. It makes me feel both more accountable and creative working with others.
3. I am a very keen learner, I love strengths, and I realize there is just so much more than I can fully attend to. I have just finished listening to 2 of the free teleconference archive broadcast from Marcus Buckingham. I can't always keep up in July so I am learning to let go or at least loosen up.
4. I have written some posts for Slacker Manager. In the process I have read quite a few old posts and studied this blog in greater detail. I always liked Bren's site but I have grown immensely in my appreciation for how much he put into this site over the past 3 years!
5. I have learned the importance of full recovery after exertion. The physical example is running a Marathon on Father's day, taking 25 minutes off of my previous best time, taking a couple of weeks off, going hard again, and then becoming sore, tired, and slightly injured. I am now taking a few more weeks easy before some preparation for the Twin City Marathon in Minneapolis. The same applies to my mental exertion teaching and I plan to spend most of August either on holidays or going easy to get ready for the New Year - I have been involved in education and school for so long that September 1st feels much more like New Year's day to me than January 1st.

Picture Credit: To Fly by http://flickr.com/photos/cuppini/878328755/.

Rapid Fire Learning | July 2007

Put on your kitchen aprons: It is time for Rapid Fire Learning!

If you are new to Joyful Jubilant Learning, this is our monthly drill for all lifelong learners in the community: We post this shout-out asking about the first 5 learnings that come to mind for you, stream-of-consciousness, quick as you can list them --- What have you learned in July?

We do this every month on day 6 before month-end, reason being that you can look over what everyone contributes (either in trackbacks or via the comments), and think of them as newfound suggestions; sort of like a Learning Menu. You can then choose 5 more new things to learn for yourself before the month is over ... one to spice up the coming week on each remaining day of the month.

All of our JJL contributing authors take turn hosting our shout-out (see all past RFL editions here), and I’m up, so here we go!

Sticking with my thought of spicing things up, here are my tasty ones for you ... these are the spices we find are used the most in the Say Kitchen:

1. CHINESE 5-SPICE (Sweet, sour, bitter, savory, and salty)
Yesterday, I encouraged you to start a Bigger Thinker’s List, calling it “What I Want to Learn.” Thanks to his generous comment here, I learned that Adam Kayce of Monk at Work had recently simmered up a similar meme he called What's Your Learning Edge? This one is a true multiplier --- check it out for all the edgy suggestions you can add to YOUR Bigger Thinker’s List!

Adam’s Challenge: If you’re not currently pushing the envelope of your intellectual horizons… or if you’re feeling a staleness in your life that you wouldn’t mind giving the ol’ heave-ho to… then I invite you to pick something that you’ve always been curious about, and dive into it with all the passion of a two-year-old on a playground.

2. GARLIC SALT (Or maybe popcorn salt ...)
At the beginning of this month, that caramel, peanuts, and popcorn confection we know as Cracker Jack® came to mind for me in the most delightful way. Within my reading of The Starbucks Experience by Dr. Joseph Michelli I was learning about the 5 Principles that the coffee giant uses “for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary.”

The five principles I learned about are;

1. Make it your own
2. Everything matters
3. Surprise and delight
4. Embrace resistance
5. Leave your mark

“Surprise and delight” turned out to be my favorite one!

3. MUSTARD POWDER (preferably Coleman's)
I am confidently certain that any JJLer will tell you they think books are magic. In July we all experienced quite a phenomenal book feat; 8.3 million copies of a single book release sold within a single day. My personal take-away from that feat, known to us as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was this: We all have magical powers.

The magic is within the written word. We call those magical powers ‘writing.’

Yes, it is something I already knew, however it is also something I keep learning about. I am one of the few who has not yet read any of the Harry Potter sagas, yet I am still grateful for the learning of what Ms. Rowling has caused to happen!

4. GINGER (there are 7 types I know of in Hawai‘i  alone... we have four of them in our yard)
On July 07,2007 we learned that what started as a brainstorm of seven different words starting with L could turn into something magic, and we called it the 7 Wonders of Joyful Jubilant Learning.

Wow. Just thinking about it still blows me away.

Listen, Laugh, Learn, Link, Love, Live, and Leap to Wonder

5. INAMONA (A Hawaiian seasoning for raw fish)
Just as there seem to be a whole host of welcoming ways to use inamona in preparing Hawaiian poke (raw fish), this month I learned once again that I only need to turn to our generous Ho‘ohana Community for more learning about our universal values.

This month our forum was all about ho‘okipa, the Hawaiian value of hospitality. Check out these contributions at Talking Story; fifteen articles on hospitality as of this writing, plus eight more that Maria Palma collected in her Customer Service Carnivale!

Okay, YOUR TURN!

Pick your own 5 Spices, and eat up all the bloggy real estate you want to in the comments. Or flash-cook and sear the RFL stream-of-consciousness way: Tell us what you have learned this month as a simple list, no links needed... our looking for them can be part of our learning :-)

The welcome mat leads to your kitchen now ... Let’s cook up a Rapid Fire Learning pot-luck!

Start a Bigger Thinker’s List: “What I Want to Learn”

I have begun to read The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. I’m only about seventy pages into it, but I can already tell it will be one of those books that really gets me to re-think about things that I have come to believe I’ve already thought through. It’s a book that is telling me how wrong I am on virtually every page, and I’m okay with that. In fact, I’m thrilled. Ferriss can give my brain as many kick-starts as he wants.

You can never get too lazy about thinking. Thinking is the humility muscle in your brain that lies somewhere in-between those other two halves some people talk about. Far as I can tell, there’s no learning without thinking. I call it the ‘humility muscle’ because it can handle that bully we all have inside us called our ego.

Now thinking can be laborious and joyless, or it can be liberating and jubilant. So far, Ferriss is giving me the liberating and jubilant kind of thinking, and I really, really love it!

In what I’ve read so far, there’s been one thought in particular that keeps bugging me though, so much so that I had to put the book aside for moment to write this for you.

Ferris says that “most people will never know what they want” and the more I think about this, I realize how right he is about that.

Most of us struggle with our goals because we are really terrible at dreaming up the good stuff. We just copy-cat the dreams which currently seem to be popular with most of the world, even though they don’t keep us up at night chomping at the bit for them. If we actually manage to nail them, we then wonder why achieving our goals is kind of boring, and not all they’re cracked up to be.

I run into this within my coaching business when I challenge people with ‘Imi ola, the Hawaiian value that urges us to seek (‘imi) our best possible life (ola). I ask them to describe what their best possible life would be, and what should be a really easy question turns out to be pretty difficult for them.

Why is that? Why is dreaming about what we want, and learning to articulate it so hard for us? Why can’t we think bigger and brighter, and more lick-our-lips eagerly about what we want?

Now consider this, written by a good friend of mine, a very wise, wily Coyote kind of guy;

Learning and living are the same. When you stop learning, you start to die a little every day. Strong scientific evidence links between brain cells can regrow at any age if you give them some exercise. Your brain is a case of "use it or lose it."
—Adrian Savage

I agree with Adrian, and here’s my theory: If we can dream bigger about the things we want to learn about, our dreams for our best possible lives will get better too. We’ll be more daring, break some rules, continually ask “Why not?” and go for it in more joyful, jubilant ways.

How about testing this theory with me?

Do you know what you want to learn about? Can you write a list out for yourself? What would be on it?

• How about speed-reading?
• Another language … something exotic like Etruscan or Patois?
• Can you draw a family tree? How about genealogy, or about parenting step-children?
• How about Paleontology, or making life-sized dioramas?
• Appreciative inquiry or Stand-up comedy?
• Bungee jumping or para-sailing?
• How to make a salt-water fish tank, or the world’s largest ant farm?
• Needlepoint? Ice-carving with a chainsaw? Making spun sugar? Mud wrestling?

You can do me better, I know you can.

Start a Bigger Thinker’s List. Call it “What I Want to Learn for No Reason Other Than the Joy of it.” Keep a slip of paper with you for the next week, and just write down all the intriguing ideas which come your way. Just one guideline: It has to make you smile broadly or giggle like a silly child.

Better yet, don’t wimp on this with a slip of paper. Go get a flipchart sized page and doodle your list all over it. Roll it up and carry it around with you with a bunch of colored sharpies. Be brave: Show it to people and ask them if they can be crazier than you. Laugh about it together.

And for goodness sake, do NOT begin to list any reasons why you can’t learn any of the things on your list, for you can learn them all. Remember that can’t usually means won’t.

Dream like a Bigger Thinker dreams.

Are you with me?

International Day of Peace - 9/21/07

Please consider accepting the challenge as outlined by LJCohen

I have been giving a lot of thought to my place in the world. I am so fortunate--I was born in a time and place in which I have the gifts of food, shelter, clothing, and basic safety. And I can pass these gifts on to my children.

I believe that because of the accident of birth and the advantages I was given, unearned, that I have an obligation to give back to society. We do that as a family in the form of charity, volunteer work, and lifestyle choices.

In a few weeks, the world will be celebrating an International Day of Peace (September 21).

In honor of that day, I would like to challenge bloggers around the world to write a blog post titled: Giving Back, talking about what you are able to do in order to give back the world. This can include organizations you personally support, though I really want to showcase actions. Do you volunteer in community organizations? Your local school district? Regional, national, or international organizations? Do you maintain a community garden? How about simple things in your neighborhood like shoveling your neighbor's walkway when it snows because you know she can't? Picking up bottles and cans along the bike path to recycle?

Big or small, what do you do for your world?

Every action has an impact. Let's show the world how much a group of regular individuals can do.

If you would like to participate in the Blogger Giving Back Challenge, leave a comment here in this post with a link back to your blog, or send me an email. I'll work out the details of sharing all the blog links in preparation of post day, September 21st.

Please spread the word. You can make a difference. We can all make a difference.

--
Posted By LJCohen to Once in a Blue Muse: A poet's journal at 7/21/2007 02:39:00 PM

I have accepted this challenge.

Will you?

Go to Once in a Blue Muse and let LJ know!

We all have magical powers

We call those magical powers ‘writing.’ The magic is within the written word.

What author doesn’t wish they had written a phenomenon like Harry Potter?

The financial success would certainly be sweet, mostly because what it buys for you is the financial freedom to have a literary life, one where you can shut everything else out and simply write to your heart’s content. I daresay most authors will tell you they do not envy Ms. Rowling’s fame, for such things get too intrusive.

However the phenomenon is more than the financial freedom; it is the accomplishment of having Harry Potter become a household name, one that creates conversations and sends the mind on fanciful journeys of imagination. The phenomenon all authors surely yearn for, is that their words have had an impact; it is knowing that what you have written can so positively inspire.

As I sheepishly admitted to David Zinger in another conversation here, “I’m the odd duck who has never read a single Harry Potter book or seen any of the films,” and therefore, the character names and plot twists are pretty unfamiliar to me. Yet here I am, writing about it.

I have watched the entire circus that surrounds each book release with fascination, for that ‘circus’ is such a study in what drives human interest, and I can’t help but wonder about the “wisdom of crowds” in one moment and the story of lemmings in the next. It tells us so much about how people will choose to spend their time, convenience be damned, and why they want what they want. It makes us wonder why people aren’t as driven to work on real life itself, versus besieging Rowling with letters pleading she never allows the fantasy to end.

LONDON — Outside Waterstone's book shop in tourist-filled Piccadilly Circus, a woman in her 20s slept soundly on the sidewalk, her witch's hat covering her tired eyes.

A young girl dressed as a Victorian nurse chewed on candy and chatted with others eagerly waiting outside the store. And at the front of the growing line, a 16-year-old from the Netherlands held a sign addressed to spectators: "Only $2 for staring," it said.

A woman from Michigan and her two daughters were camped farther down the line. They booked a hotel across the street to make sure they would not miss the bookstore party.

"I love the waiting and anticipating, of guessing what is going to occur," said Margie McCloy. "Sharing this with my girls is what is most magical to me."

"I'll miss the spectacle," interrupted Chellie Carr, McCloy's youngest daughter. "No Harry Potter fan will ever experience this after this book."

The great irony here is that personally, I still have very little desire to read a Harry Potter book. I’m sure I would if one were given to me, however the book dollars I spend go to a wide array of other choices that will always trump fantasy. Yet I can tell you without any doubt whatsoever that my story would be different if my own children were younger in 1997 when the first Harry Potter book was published, for they were then past the age of contentedly sitting and allowing me to read to them. Like me, they were making other choices in bookstores. However they were not beyond other fascinations … remember furbies? I have one of those stories of what I went through to get my daughter a pure white one, and my son a pure black one during one frantic Christmas season …

I agree with the sentiment in this editorial in The Herald Bulletin, and I also cheer for what J.K. Rowling has achieved, however I also know the editor is wrong;

Whether you are a fan of the best-selling series in book history, a lover of the spine-tingling movie adventures or a die-hard Potter hater, it doesn’t matter. What J.K. Rowling has done for reading is something we may never see again in our lifetime. Her creation of Harry, Hermione, Ron and all the magical creatures in between have recreated a powerful lust for books.

Rowling may just have magical powers herself.

Look at how many people she has brought together. Kids have in-depth conversations about Potter books with adults. And adults talk back. Brothers and sisters bond over the adventures. Grandparents find something in common with their grandkids.

Type in “Harry Potter” on the Web. Thousands upon thousands of sites pop up: blogs, bookstores, Web sites. It’s like we are all in this giant Potter book club together.

Where will people be tonight and Saturday? At bookstores and at libraries, celebrating. The characters will come to life with costume contests and trivia games. Then, when the book is distributed, fans will stay up all night and read. The thirst for knowledge is exhilarating.

Kids will be hunkered down under the covers with flashlights all night tonight, and parents won’t mind a bit. Chances are the adults are secretly reading in their rooms, too.

Thank you, Rowling, for your gift — for getting us to turn off our video games, computers and TVs and read again.

This is the part I know to be wrong: What J.K. Rowling has done for reading is something we may never see again in our lifetime.

To all you writers out there, keep reading and keep writing. Rowling’s magic can continue to happen, for we all have those very same magical powers.
~Rosa Say

Click on photos for credits.

---

From the Joyful Jubilant Learning Archives:

• On the Road to Publication
• A Guide to Writing Well
• Write to Learn; Slow, Steady, Sure

Must-read blog for writers: Confident Writing by Joanna Young